Our Story
Ancient Leaf, New Fire
Dragon's Nectar was born out of an idea whose momentum I couldn't hold back:
Would it be possible to use new growing and processing techniques, along with using the wealth of Tea Camellia diversity that nature has gifted to us, to produce teas with lower caffeine content, whilst maintaining the other health benefits and without sacrificing flavour profile
We seek to honour and build on the ancient traditions of tea development in China and across East Asia. In much of modern tea culture, especially in the West, quality is often associated with restraint — vegetal freshness, mineral clarity, and minimal intervention. Historically however, many Chinese tea traditions pursued a different goal: resolution.
Rather than preserving raw leaf character, skilled tea makers sought to harmonise bitterness, aroma, sweetness, and mouthfeel into something rounded, digestible, and lingering. Styles such as white, yellow, and aged white teas emerged not to mute flavour, but to complete it. We are here to rediscover and complement that magic! The same beliefs drive us to source a wealth of top grade Chinese teas so that you have the opportunity to share the passion.
As we are a new company, we will be bringing our first limited batches of our Light Oolong to market as special releases later in 2026, followed by larger quantities for sale in 2027. If you would like to learn more and and support the project, you can sign up or donate here.
By the way, we don't just do tea! Please visit our services page to find out about what other horticultural offerings we can provide you, including our bespoke horticultural consultancy and training offering.
What We Do
A blending of science and tradition is what sets us apart. We respect the techniques that have been developed over centuries. Indeed, the Dragon in our name represents not only Wales, but pays tribute to the heritage of tea production in China and South East Asia.
We combine this knowledge with techniques adapted from advanced horticulture and from other speciality food production processes to produce teas with unparalleled qualities, offering you something quite different from the ordinary.
We focus on consistency, product quality and safety so that you know you are getting the very best tea available every time. All of our teas are grown without pesticides and do not contribute to environmental degradation caused by fertiliser run-off or pesticide use.
Low Caffeine Speciality Teas
Our main goal as Dragon's Nectar is to develop low caffeine speciality teas.
Currently, almost all teas have moderate to high levels of caffeine. A lot of us these days are very aware of the negative effects that caffeine can have, especially if we drink later in the day! If you want something with low or no caffeine in the afternoon or evening then you have to reach for the infusions box. There's nothing wrong with a well blended infusion, we drink a lot ourselves, but we still think that's a great shame. All the benefits and amazing tastes of speciality tea and such a short window to drink them!
All that is about to change with our naturally low caffeine speciality teas.
How We Do It
When it comes to producing the highest standard of tea, there are no shortcuts. Each step in the process requires skill and precision to perfect. We trial numerous iterations of different processing techniques to get to the product we think you'll love.
This means growing in ways that allow us to work with the plant to produce leaves with just the right composition of compounds ready to transform into lovely flavours (we call them metabolites in scientific jargon). Compounds which are ready for transformation in processing are called precursors.
Once we have leaves that are fit for processing, next comes the alchemy. Depending on the type of tea, we use precise control over withering, oxidation, fixing and drying to turn these precursors into something beautiful, with a few bits of secret magic thrown in!
Producing an all-day speciality tea
Our main goal as Dragon's Nectar is to develop low caffeine speciality teas.
Our processes target caffeine by:
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Selecting for Tea Camellia plants that naturally produce lower quantities of caffeine.
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Using our knowledge of plant biology to grow in ways that limit caffeine build up.
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Processing carefully to balance retention and production of flavour compounds.
We test our teas not just for caffeine, but also theobromine and theanine. Theobromine is the 'happy chemical' in chocolate and some special tea varieties also have significant amounts of this chemical (like the ones we use).
Theanine is the chemical in tea that is purported to aid with concentration and reduce anxiety. We are working hard to significantly alter the levels of these compounds in our teas to make them even better for you.
